


handprint on my heart

by rosycheeked



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Trailer, Character Study (kinda), Experimental Style, Ficlet, Internal Conflict, Internal Monologue, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 07:44:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18517012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosycheeked/pseuds/rosycheeked
Summary: It’s the final battle, the end of a war, and Tony has too many questions—but he only asks one.We all know what Steve says to that.





	handprint on my heart

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys!
> 
> Yes, it's another Stony fic. Look, I had to get it out before Endgame, because I watched that scene from the new trailer on too many times (you know the one, and if you don't: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roW-Q3mAKjc). Yes, it only has two lines of dialogue, but I'm pretty proud of that, because somehow I stretched that into 850 words of Tony thinking about Steve. Yep, that's all there is.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> E
> 
> P.S. If this scene really isn't in the movie, I will cry. And scream. You will hear me screaming across the world. Please let them have been joking. Please.

Tony looks at Steve. He really looks. All around them is desolation, white and grey and bloodied ashes of a once-flourishing city, a once-bustling street. Now only he and Steve stand on it. Alone, united against a common enemy, in this final fight that might just be their last.

But at least they’re in it together.

_Together._

What does together even mean, really? They’re standing beside each other, sure, and they can look each other in the eye, now. They’ve sorted out their issues. Well, some of them. Tony hadn’t been able to stand the heavy emotions, Steve’s gaze full of regret and promises and fragile hope, for too long.

But even so, they’re not together-together, not like before. Then, it was looks that lingered too long, and hushed whispers at three in the morning when they both need companionship for reasons they don’t want to say. Now, it’s stolen glances while the other isn’t looking, and foolish wishes for something more than the perfunctory words that they now exchange.

Tony supposes that they’ll never quite be able to get back what they had before. It was bound to end anyway, he tells himself. It doesn’t work. His heart, his stupid, foolish heart, is wanting, longing, reaching, for it. For what it can no longer have. Oh, Tony tries to forget. To teach himself not to want.

It doesn’t work. When has it ever?

If this is going to be Tony’s last battle, well, he’ll be damned if he doesn’t take advantage of these few moments of calm before everything goes to shit. And of course, it’s just him and Steve here, him and Steve at the end of the world, at the end of this war to end all wars, at the end of everything. It always comes down to the two of them.

So he opens his mouth to say something calming, something like an apology, something like a goodbye, but his stupid, foolish heart takes over, and instead he says, “Do you trust me?”

And his voice is so smooth, so steady. It’s almost as if he’s not just as shocked by his asking this question as Steve seems to be at being asked. 

Tony knows, though, that his question is not really the question that he was meaning to ask at all. Even though he maintains he wasn’t going to ask a question anyway. When he said, “do you trust me?” he meant—

_did you miss me?_

_did you forgive me?_

_do you remember me?_

What he wanted to say, but never could:

_do you miss us?_

_can we ever be like we used to?_

_do you want it as much as I do?_

But Tony doesn’t say that. He looks Steve in the eye, an astounding feat seeing as though Steve’s gaze is piercing and pensive, beautiful and cold and looking right back at Tony.

He looks Steve in the eye, and he asks, flat-out, blunt (Tony Stark’s speciality), sarcasm-free, “Do you trust me?”

_do you want me?_

And Steve’s always been so sure, Tony thinks, sure about everything, definitive from his breakfast to sacrificing a teammate ( _call it, Cap_ ).

Tony sees exactly the moment where Steve wavers—wavers!—his eyes flicking down to the concrete below, the cracks spiderwebbing across the once-solid pavement.

Tony’s afraid. Of what Steve will say, of what he will reply to an oh-so-deceptively simple question. Simple yet devastating.

He’d said, with every intention behind his words, with all the things he couldn’t say to Steve for fear that he hadn’t been forgiven, because things between them would never be the same, he’d said: “Do you trust me?”

_do you love me?_

_do you?_

Tony can hear the echoes of the unasked questions like the overtones of a too-low note on a piano, ringing out into a hundred different ones above, rising, fading—

And Steve’s eyes lock with his. Tony’s heart is in his throat, his stupid, foolish heart with its stupid, foolish question, which he shouldn’t even care about, but he cares way too much. He wants, fuck does he want, for Steve to say yes. His heart, his fragile, hopeful, heart, hangs in the balance.

Stark men are supposed to be made of iron. They aren’t supposed to have hearts. Much less wistful, wishful ones that ask too-simple questions.

Tony Stark is not just any Stark. He can have a heart if he wants to.

“Do you trust me?” he asks, and it’s his heart, his yearning heart, laid bare, in four words that mean everything to him. To both of them.

Here, at the end of the world, at the end of a war, at the threshold of a final battle which will decide it all, Tony and Steve stand together.

_Together._

And Steve breathes in, his eyes never leaving Tony’s, and he looks as sure as he’s ever been.

Tony sees his mouth forming the words before he says them, knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Steve is going to say it, he’s going to say—

_do you think about me?_

_do you miss us?_

_do you want me?_

_do you love me?_

_do you trust me?_

_do you?_

“I do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Please don't hesitate to leave any thoughts or suggestions, it's always lovely to hear from you. 
> 
> The title comes from these lyrics:
> 
> “ _So let me say, before we part  
>  So much of me  
> Is made of what I learned from you  
> You’ll be with me  
> Like a handprint on my heart  
> And now whatever way our stories end  
> You know you have rewritten mine  
> By being my friend._”
> 
> \- “For Good” from _Wicked_


End file.
